Not everyone gets to say that they’ve been able to design their own Nike shoe. Did you ever think that you’d get to say that you did? What are your overall thoughts on the project?
No, I definitely never thought I would get to be able to say that I got to design a Nike shoe, let alone a Dunk. The shoes perfectly represent the Willy Wonka of this movie and this origin story. It’s not the Gene Wilder Wonka with decades of success, and lots of money, and a chocolate factory behind him. It’s a young Willy Wonka that is ambitious, and joyful, and full of good spirit, and not quite that level of success yet.
So, that’s why the shoes are kind of distressed and tattered out of the box right away. That’s why we didn’t want it to feel too new or too on the nose with the purple. We wanted to feel like something that was representative of the movie. Getting to work on the shoe is literally a dream come true, which is one of the main messages in the movie, not to give up on your dreams and not to let anybody tell you no.
For the design process, you got to visit Nike campus. What was that experience like?
Well, visiting Beaverton was like visiting the real Willy Wonka Factory. It was unlike anything I’d ever imagined, just the level of dedication. And this isn’t a marketing plug by the way because I don’t have a Nike deal or anything. This is all sincere. It’s literally like a magic factory over there.
And it’s part of the beauty that it’s located in Beaverton, It’s not in the thick of things in LA or New York or Chicago. It’s really its own world, at least from my outside perspective. I brought the Willy Wonka jacket, the tattered young Wonka jacket. [The designers and I] thought it might be a little obvious to do the shoe in purple or something. We saw that there had been previous dunks and AF1s that were matte purple or velvet purple. So, we tried to think outside the box and we figured the inside lining of the jacket from the movie was actually a little more unconventional and more representative of what a young Willy Wonka would actually want his own pair of Dunks to look like, if they were around in the late 1940s. [Laughs.]
But the campus at Beaverton wasn’t like anything that I’ve ever been a part of. It was so fascinating for me too. Nike is representative of so much more than in sports. It’s culture. It’s the stuff that so many young people dream of. But when you’re on campus, you really realize how it’s an athletics brand. They dream and they innovate for athletes at the highest level. So, to get to partner with them under the guise of a chocolatier, I just knew how lucky I was. I was a kid in a candy store.
When you look at the final design, there’s this very loud print on it and the materials are very premium. Were you almost surprised that they could execute it in that way, with those type of unique details?
I really was. It was inspiring, even from a filmmaking or an acting perspective, how streamlined the creative process is there, how organized it is. Sometimes when things get too bureaucratic, it stifles innovation or creativity. But I couldn’t even believe, like you just said, how distressed the Nike logo is. It’s unlike any pair of Dunks I’ve ever seen. And how they added the Silver Linings Chocolate. It’s one of the iconic chocolates in the movie. That’s on the back of the shoe, and it’s sort of 3D. Distressed is the word I probably used the most in the creative sessions. I just didn’t know how it would come out and they totally nailed it. There’s even a secret message underneath the sole of the shoe and even that’s distressed. I was looking at them right before I got on this call and there’s little threads that jump out of that. So, it’s sort of unbelievable.